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Brotherhood

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Thy sweet magic brings together
What stern Custom spreads afar;
All men become brothers
Where thy happy wing-beats are. ~ Friedrich Schiller

Brotherhood or Fraternity are terms for social relationships based on a sense of connection and goodwill between people, often very broadly in regard of all humanity. They have also been used to specify various exclusive groups or organizations, including those only for males, or for individuals with particular religious or political ideologies.

Quotes

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  • That which is most sacred surrounds the concept of Brotherhood. That which is most joyful lives in the consciousness that there exists cooperation of Knowledge.
  • Let us consider a concept which has become extremely overburdened. Amidst daily life people assimilate with difficulty an understanding of cooperation, yet much more difficult and inaccessible to them is the concept of Brotherhood. Bodily heritage, that is, blood relationship, impedes the acceptance of the concept of Brotherhood. It is simpler for people to disclaim altogether any understanding of World Brotherhood. They would rather call it a utopia than reflect about the possibility of applying it in life.
    If even in the narrow domain of domestic life people do not find within themselves the affirmation of brotherhood, then in the wider sense it may seem to them to be impractical. Besides, people read carelessly the ancient Covenants, which speak about great numbers of Brothers and Sisters.
    Likewise, people’s recollections of the Subtle World have become clouded. Only there is it possible to encounter the expanded realization of Brotherhood. The body impedes the way to many broad ideas. Only by going beyond the limits of the bodily understanding is it possible to recognize brotherly cooperation. Let us gather the signs of such an expanded state of consciousness. (1)
  • Some people talk little about Brotherhood but do much for it. And there are others who always have Brotherhood on their tongues and are never far from treachery. (16)
  • Speak not too well of one who scarce will know
    Himself transfigured in its roseate glow;
    Say kindly of him what is, chiefly, true,
    Remembering always he belongs to you;
    Deal with him as a truant, if you will,
    But claim him, keep him, call him brother still!
    • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., "Poem", read at a dinner given for the author by the medical profession of the City of New York (April 12, 1883); reported in The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, ed. Eleanor M. Tilton (1895, rev. 1975), p. 71
  • Our own Theosophical Society... is striving... to dispel ignorance, to put before men the truth about life and death, to show them why they are here and what lessons they have to learn and so to bring them to understand and to realize the great truth of the brotherhood of man.
  • The crest and crowning of all good,
    Life's final star, is Brotherhood    ;
    For it will bring again to Earth
    Her long-lost Poesy and Mirth;
    Will send new light on every face,
    A kingly power upon the race.
    And till it come, we men are slaves,
    And travel downward to the dust of graves.
    • Edwin Markham, "Brotherhood", The Man with the Hoe and Other Poems (1899)
  • Come, clear the way, then, clear the way:
    Blind creeds and kings have had their day.
    Break the dead branches from the path;
    Our hope is in the aftermath —
    Our hope is in heroic men,
    Star-led to build the world again.
    To this Event the ages ran:
    Make way for Brotherhood — make way for Man.
    • Edwin Markham, "Brotherhood", The Man with the Hoe and Other Poems (1899)
  • There is a destiny that makes us brothers:
    None goes his way alone:
    All that we send into the lives of others
    Comes back onto our own.
    • Edwin Markham, "A Creed", stanza 1, reported in Poems of Edwin Markham (1950), p. 18
  • The fact is that the truth of harmony and human brotherhood derives not from an absorbed trance but from an awakened prajñâ or wisdom; and its validity depends not on any dramatic ecstatic visions but it belongs to man’s (…) natural reason unspoilt by theologies of exclusiveness.
    • Ram Swarup: Ramakrishna Mission, p.13. (1986)

Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

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Enough of good there is in the lowest estate to sweeten life; enough of evil in the highest to check presumption; enough there is of both in all estates, to bind us in compassionate brotherhood, to teach us impressively that we are of one dying and one immortal family. ~ Henry Giles
Quotes reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)
  • Enough of good there is in the lowest estate to sweeten life; enough of evil in the highest to check presumption; enough there is of both in all estates, to bind us in compassionate brotherhood, to teach us impressively that we are of one dying and one immortal family.
  • My friends, let us try to follow the Saviour's steps; let us remember all day long what it is to be men; that it is to have everv one whom we meet for our brother in the sight of God; that it is this, never to meet any one, however bad he may be, for whom we cannot say. "Christ died for that man, and Christ cares for him still. He is precious in God's eyes, and he shall be precious in mine also."
  • God has taught in the Scriptures the lesson of a universal brotherhood, and man must not gainsay the teaching. Shivering in the ice-bound or scorching in the tropical regions; in the lap of luxury or in the wild hardihood of the primeval forest; belting the globe in a tired search for rest, or quieting through life in the heart of ancestral woods; gathering all the decencies around him like a garment, or battling in fierce raid of crime against a world which has disowned him, there is an inner humanness which binds me to that man by a primitive and indissoluble bond. He is my brother, and I cannot dissever the relationship. He is my brother, and I cannot release myself from the obligation to do him good.
  • Kings and their subjects, masters and slaves, find a common level in two places — at the foot of the cross, and in the grave.
  • I stand by my kind; and I thank God for the temptations that have brought me into sympathy with them, as I do for the "love that urges me to efforts for their good. I hail the great brotherhood of trial and temptation in the name of humanity, and give them assurance that from the Divine Man, and some, at least, of His disciples, there goes out to them a flood of sympathy that would fain sweep them up to the firm footing of the rock of safety.
  • Jesus throws down the dividing prejudices of nationality, and teaches universal love without distinction of race, merit, or rank. A man's neighbor, henceforth, was every one who needed help, even an enemy. All men, from the slave to the highest, were sons of one Father in heaven, and should feel and act toward each other, as brethren. No human standard of virtue would suffice; no imitations of the loftiest examples among men. Moral perfection had been recognized alike by heathen and Jews, as found only in likeness to the Divine, and that Jesus proclaims as, henceforth, the one ideal for all humanity. With a sublime enthusiasm and brotherly love for the race, He rises above His age, and announces a common Father of all mankind, and one grand spiritual ideal in resemblance to Him.

See also

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Wikipedia
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Wiktionary
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